I'm currently working on a lot of the gameplay features as opposed to the graphics...which I prefer working on. I've designed the diplomacy window recently which allows the player to propose alliances, declare war, send/demand tributes, get basic info on other gangs, also set the default reaction upon sight of 'gang X' in 'territory y'. So you can say you only want to attack a gang within your territory (defensive stance), or only to attack them in their territory (offensve stance)...and you can set the reaction state for all other territory.
Right now the player can give orders to his gangsters...then take control of any one of them...once they take control they're presented with a standard "shooting game" GUI that shows health, inventory, etc. In the bottom of the screen it shows their current order ie: "The boss wants you to move to this location"...I then display the point on the GUI with a label, and the distance in meters. So it would display "Move here (35m)" over the point, so the player can navigate there and complete his own orders from the perspective of the henchman. It seems to work well.
I tried to make some good videos of the game...with not much success....I need a faster computer to capture at a decent framerate :-( Or maybe I'm not using the right software...I really need to try the full spectrum.
I've also been working a lot on creating a speech/conversation system...this is a picture of how the speech bubbles are looking...
I got an idea of how to do the voices after seeing a cartoon on tv earlier, there was a robot character that spoke with a "sped up human voice", almost like the effect of fast forwarding somebody talking on a tape recorder, so I'm going to try that tommorow (actually this is the tecnique used in the first GTA game :-0). I just need something that resembles human speech to match up with the text, when characters are talking via speech bubbles in the game.
I'm, also working on adding curved roads ;-) and overpasses into the game.
Here's some pictures of how it's looking...
Ugh...so much work still left to do, I hope I don't go crazy before this thing's done...heh...eh...uh...*nervous laugh*....*slowly backs out of the room*...*runs*
